Magazine ArticlesCredenda|agenda: things to be believed, things to be donehttp://www.credenda.org/index.php/Table/Presbyterion-On-Church-Government/
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 22:26:31 +0000Joomla! 1.5 - Open Source Content Managementen-gbCristendom, Structured Loyalties, and the Local Congregationhttp://www.credenda.org/index.php/Presbyterion-On-Church-Government/cristendom-structured-loyalties-and-the-local-congregation.html
http://www.credenda.org/index.php/Presbyterion-On-Church-Government/cristendom-structured-loyalties-and-the-local-congregation.htmlIn his book Against Christianity, Peter Leithart argues effec­tively against the idea of the Christian faith as an “ism.” We believe in Jesus, not in some abstracted form of Christian­ism. Not only do we believe in Jesus, but we are also con­nected to His body, the Church, and we function there with tangible loyalties in view. But the point of connection for us is always to a local congregation, and this creates some problems and questions.

The Christian faith has exploded around the world and, at least until the objective formation of Christendom 2.0 occurs, the only way to get a handle on “Christendom” as it currently exists is by means of abstraction. The abstraction Christianity refers to is the doctrinal content of our faith, and our current form of scattered Christendom can only be apprehended by a comparable form of abstraction. To take the teaching of all the Bible and winnow it down to a few basic creeds gives us Christianity. But this is actually easier than to conceptualize the concrete reality of the worship and lifestyle practices of a billion individual Christians and call it Christendom. When I say Christendom, I have no specific idea in my mind, any more than if I say beauty, truth or love.

My connection to the local body of Christ is very tan­gible but, by definition, is it must also be limited, concrete, and specific. My organic point of contact is with a body where everybody speaks English, all of us are wealthy in global terms, almost all voted in politically conservative ways in the last several rounds of elections, and so on. If we pull back away from all this and take the Google Earth view of Christendom, then we have something that is pretty much at the same level of abstraction that Christianity is. We can see the forest, but no trees. If we zoom into another kind of local congregation, somewhere in Nigeria, say, we will get a very different set of demographic realities than I am used to here. If we choose China instead, the picture will again alter accordingly. If we back away to look at the whole again, we discover that all the nitty gritty details have been washed out. Put another way, Christendom (for us in our experience, at any rate) is as much of an idea as Christianity is.

The scandal of the Incarnation to the Greek mind was in part because of its particularity. Jesus had a hometown, and a particular woman was His mom. The Hellenistic mind always kicks against this, and inevitably wants to universal­ize. It has a built-in bias against the particular and specific, especially when that particular and specific thing claims to be the ultimate Logos. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

The First Christendom grew up as a kind of civiliza­tional revolt against this Hellenistic bias. But as it grew up, something funny happened—the organic connectedness to Christendom that Christians had was very different in the different places where they lived—very different in England than in Russia. Very different in Georgia than in Georgia. Because there were no cable channels, and no twenty-four hour news coverage, a lot of this went unnoticed for a long time.

In the gospel, God does not offer us one particular in exchange for the one universal. Rather, He bestows mul­tiple particulars on us, all tied together with the one uni­versal Christ. The Incarnate Christ was from a town called Nazareth. The risen Christ is at the right hand of the Father, He is the arche, the One in whom all things tie together. In Christ we have a particular Universal. But the Father is the only one who sees how it all ties together. We know that it does, but apart from abstraction, we cannot know how it does.

So here is the practical problem. A generic loyalty to “Christendom” amounts to loyalty to no one in particular, and as such, it suffers from the same problem that loyalty to “Christianity” does. But when someone develops strong loy­alties to the one tangible manifestation of the Church that he actually knows, the problem is frequently that of becom­ing sectarian and/or provincial. The local church is taken for the whole, instead of being the point of entry to the whole.

The more I cultivate loyalty to people I see, visit with, and worship together with, the more American my direct experience of the faith becomes. The more I try to distance myself from this kind of thing, the more I become a rarified, deracinated Christian. Some cosmopolitan Christians avoid this by traveling a lot, but this does not give us the universal view from nowhere, but rather creates an ecclesiastical ver­sion of the cosmopolitan traveler—just another particular.

The solution appears to me to be this: we must reject the idea that we have to choose the universal Church over the particular congregation. We also must reject the idea that we can settle into our provincial loyalties without any thought to the universal Christendom. We are finite, and we have to work within the constraints of our finitude. That means that our only real choice is between a healthy loyalty and attachment to our local congregation and an unhealthy and idolatrous attachment to that same congregation. If we fall into the latter, then our attitudes to the broader Church will be diseased in some way. If we are connected to our local body in a healthy way, then God—who is after all the One who is knitting the body together—will see to the rest of it.

]]>dougwils@christkirk.com (Douglas Wilson)Presbyterion: On Church GovernmentThu, 15 Oct 2009 04:19:07 +0000Are All Illnesses the Real Deal?http://www.credenda.org/index.php/Presbyterion-On-Church-Government/are-all-illnesses-the-real-deal.html
http://www.credenda.org/index.php/Presbyterion-On-Church-Government/are-all-illnesses-the-real-deal.htmlOne of the more delicate tasks facing a pastor is the situation that may be created in his congregation by ailing and sick parishioners who are perhaps not sick in the way they think they are. It is delicate for all the obvious reasons, and writing about it here is also somewhat delicate. If a pastor indicates that he believes that in some cases, some illnesses might not be what they appear to be on the surface, some people are going to think that he believes this all the time, for every case. And that will have a chilling effect on the willingness of some who really are sick to “call for the elders” (Jas. 5:14), as they ought to be able to do.

So it should be said at the outset that there are plenty of mystery illnesses that are genuine stumpers, and that it is not the case that every illness that baffles the medical professionals is a case of hypochondria. In addition, as I have argued before, the established profession of conventional medicine—when it comes to widespread distrust of that profession found among many conservative Christians—has only itself to blame for this. A profession of healing that has signed off on abortion has no right to complain when people start avoiding its experts. This tragedy has naturally opened a door to various forms of self-diagnosis among Christians, some who do it quite well, and some who do not. But either way, it can create pastoral problems.

If the problem stays at the level of aches, pains, and prayer requests, the obvious thing to do is simply pray. The Lord knows the situation perfectly, and committing the whole thing to Him will never cause additional problems. But if the person who is sick requires a great deal of additional practical help (meals, help getting around, child care, etc.), and the pastor strongly suspects that the cause is not physical, what should he do?

The first thing he should do is sort out the possibilities in his mind. It is false to say that there are only two options—true sickness with an identifiable germ at the bottom of it or something fake in the “it’s all in your head” category. Consider the range of possibilities. First is the true malingerer and faker. He is not sick and he knows it, and he is pretending to be sick for reasons of his own, perhaps related to the avoidance of work. Then there is the person who is not sick, but who for very tangled emotional reasons, needs the reassurance that comes to him when he is injured or sick. This is not necessarily self-conscious or self-aware, but it can be pretty obvious from the outside. For example, take the really insecure kid in junior high who gets hurt in P.E., but who wears the knee brace on alternate knees for the next week. Then there is the person who is absolutely convinced there is something wrong with him, or that he needs to head off something because he read an article that said he was in the high risk category, and so he begins to treat himself with high levels of all-natural toxicity. His problems are very real, but they are being caused by the medicine he is giving himself. Then there is the person who has a number of genuine, presenting symptoms, and the pain or discomfort is very real. He believes that the problem is caused by something objective and external, but the pastor (for various reasons) has begun to suspect that the cause is (for example) the result of a great deal of internalized stress or guilt. The effects are real, but the cause is not something that conventional medicine (or alternative medicine, for that matter), can really get at. There are variations on this, but you get the picture. It is important to note that a person in this kind of circumstance is not necessarily lying. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and just because it is happening in our own bodies doesn’t mean we know what is going on.

The second thing a minister should do is treat every situation that comes to him with sympathy and respect. We cannot see into hearts, and we ought not to act dogmatically as though we can. If any of the above possibilities are occurring, the pastor will have to win an audience with the person he is ministering to, and that cannot be done by viewing every report of an illness with a jaundiced eye right at the outset. “Sick, eh? Prove it.” Take the reports at face value until you start to have objective reasons not to. And when you start to have those reasons, pray for an opportunity to address it with the person—in a way where the subject comes up naturally. And when it is raised, it does not need to be raised as a statement of fact from you. It can be raised as a possibility. “Have you considered . . .?”

The third thing is that the pastor should work to create an understanding within the church (and particularly on the session) that this is the kind of thing that happens from time to time, often in churches. It does not happen all the time, but it does happen. If this simple truth (that it happens sometimes) is reacted to defensively by someone, and they want the church to assume that no illness can ever be in this category, then that defensiveness is a danger, one which cannot be allowed to become a cultural assumption of the congregation.